


I will not send this letter

by doctornerdington



Category: Pride and Prejudice (1995), Pride and Prejudice (2005), Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Genre: Epistolary, F/F, Friendship, Love, Lust, Marriage, Unsent letters, nor are they mutually exclusive, these things do not always overlap, things are complicated ok?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-10
Updated: 2016-06-10
Packaged: 2018-07-13 22:44:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7140773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctornerdington/pseuds/doctornerdington
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charlotte Collins falls in love (not, it need hardly be said, with her husband).</p>
            </blockquote>





	I will not send this letter

Dearest Elizabeth,

It has been weeks since your last letter: a letter, pages long, filled with nothing very much of anything (in other words, your usual correspondence). You forget that I know your mind. I see you very clearly.

No doubt you are much occupied with your handsome husband and the new demands of married life. I wonder what you make of those demands, Lizzie, of being so absorbed. _Are_ you absorbed, as I was not, as a newlywed? Are you happy? I think you must be, for you are made for happiness, and love, and sunshine, and what I imagine to be the profound pleasure of realizing a life that resembles your early expectations in every respect. I am truly glad for you and, I suppose, glad for him.

I think you are not glad for me, but oh – how I wish you would be. Your empty letters tell me all I need to know of your condescension. We are such old friends, Lizzie: you can write more plainly than you do. I promise that I will not take offence. But I do not need your pity, nor even your concerned solicitude; it is quite wasted on me. The world is large, Lizzie, and the creatures that inhabit it larger still. I am so very different from you.

I am not happy, you see – at least, not in the way that I imagine you feel it. I cannot bring myself to care very much, though. Happiness is irrelevant; I have thought so my whole life. I am indifferent to whether or not the golden rays of that warm sun fall much upon me, or whether I walk in the cool and reviving shade, or whether I am born to feel only moonlight. To expand my metaphor, it does not matter to me whether the sun or a candle or a starry sky illuminate my page: if I can read the words printed there, what care I from whence the light comes?

Mr. Collins would say that it matters a great deal, of course, although between ourselves, we need not concern ourselves so very much with what Mr. Collins would say. We know what sort of man he is. And yet, for all his faults, he is as good as any other. He talks over-much nonsense, but he has an income and he does not drink and he does not strike me, nor does he place excessive demands upon my person. The nonsense is easy enough to bear. Easier every day, for I scarcely hear it at all anymore; my mind is all on _her_.

Is this what it is to be absorbed in another creature? I cannot think.

 _She_ , in case you had not guessed, is Miss Anne de Bourgh. She is everything you have heard of her, in honesty: sickly, silent, meek. She is entirely opposite to you, and quite likely you would detest her. Indeed, whatever she is to me now, we did not begin as friends. She seemed so vacant: there was little of anything in her to like or to dislike. While Lady Catherine fills a room and dominates all those within it, little Anne retreats far into herself. Sometimes it is as if she is not there at all, and a blank automaton fills the space she should inhabit. I ignored her for many weeks, Lizzie. Everyone does, and I had no reason to do otherwise.

But after a time, I started to wonder where she went when she withdrew so deeply. I started to think of her, you see, and that is how it all began.

One day she rested her hand beside mine on the table and I suddenly thought: she is so slight. Surely her bones are hollow, like a little sparrow’s. I thought that I should like to take those slender wrists between my hands and snap them in two to find out; and also that I would murder anyone else who dared imagine such a thing. It was most strange, and laughingly, I took her wrist up in my hand, as if in jest.

She looked at me then, from deep within herself – looked up from under raven lashes with electric blue eyes – and we saw each other. Understand me, Lizzie, when I say: _we saw each other_. Understand the gravity of this moment. We looked into each other, and we saw all: eyes, skin and everything beneath. I saw her bones. I saw her very heart beat. I let her see mine.

It did not take us long to find a way to be alone, but it took us long, long, long to unlearn fear, to learn to touch each other as we wished. I wish always to be touching her now. Her hair, her throat, her face, and all the buried parts of her that are so delicate and so beautiful. How she quickens under my hands, and our pulsing, how it twists and rises up between us, and her little voice when she --. It is all I think about. All, all, all.

Her mother is always watching, but I have never seen a woman with less perspicacity. Fortunate for us that this is so, for often have I taken tea in Rosings’ dreary drawing room with Anne’s soft breath still filling my own lungs, her kisses burning upon my breast. Lady Catherine speaks, but I am lost inside myself, and the tea tastes only of her salt skin.

When she looks at me now, her eyes are moonlight on my body and I wonder that no one else can see it.  This is not love. It is not happiness. It is not Christian. It is not anything that anyone knows, and it does not matter, and I do not care. It is a strange joining.

I miss you, Lizzie. I do so miss you. I will not send this letter. I will write another, full of words that are not truths, but are not lies, and I will send it to you along with

All my love,

Charlotte Collins

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Femslash June, as organized by our wonderful tiltedsyllogism. Can't wait to read the rest of the fics in this collection!  
> I had two extremely perceptive and helpful beta readers for this piece: thanks so much, oulfis and redscudery!  
> I'm verrrrry seriously considering expanding this and turning it into my 2016 NaNoWriMo project. (I'm just SO in love with this pairing.) We shall see.  
> Thanks for reading! Come find me on tumblr if you're so inclined; I'm doctornerdington over there, as well.  
> xoxoxoxo


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